


Good

by the_pen_is_mightier



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale POV, Aziraphale worries he's not Good enough, But Mostly Comfort, Crowley worries he's not good enough, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, They love each other so much, ends in the present post-apocawasn't, self-conscious soft Aziraphale, so much, they’re both Soft™, very light angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 19:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pen_is_mightier/pseuds/the_pen_is_mightier
Summary: Four times Crowley called Aziraphale good, and one time Aziraphale returned all four favors with interest.





	Good

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really used to writing fluff, but these two are SO SOFT for each other I just can't help it. Hope you enjoy!

1.

“Gabriel told me I’ve been doing a bad job recently,” said Aziraphale. 

He said it as he dabbed his mouth with a napkin, still relishing the feeling of rich food filling his stomach; he said it nonchalantly, working to imply it didn’t mean much to him. 

Crowley, who had rested his chin on his hand and was simply watching Aziraphale, raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses. “A bad job?”

“Yes, well, he doesn’t approve of humans drifting away from institutionalized religion.” Aziraphale shrugged. “Thinks it’ll lead to depravity. And he suggested I ought to be doing something to prevent it. You know, building a few more churches and causing a few more public spectacles to get the populous in a reverent mood.” 

Crowley didn’t respond. The restaurant bustled around them. Aziraphale glanced up at his table partner; he wished he could read his eyes. He wished they weren’t always hidden, these days. But still he could see the demon was paying attention. Crowley always paid such close attention to him. 

“The thing is,” Aziraphale said, the words spilling out against his will, “I’m not sure I _want_ there to be more churches. God’s love is all well and good, but sometimes I think - I think churches aren’t the best expression of it. Think of all the pain they’ve caused, over the years! Think of the poor and the needy and the ostracized that they’ve abandoned! Think of the children raised in churches today to believe God hates them for their identities!” Aziraphale wrung his hands, fretting. “Maybe that does make me a bad angel. Maybe I ought to just trust, like Gabriel does. Like they all do. But they haven’t been down here, they don’t know…”

And a steadying hand rested on his arm. Crowley had just a sliver of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

“I think,” he said, “you’re a very good angel.” 

The words relaxed him, encouraged him, more than a demon’s words should. “Oh, Crowley. Thank you.” 

2.

He poked at his belly. Really, he wasn’t in the best physical condition; angels were supposed to be pinnacles of strength and fitness, and he enjoyed eating perhaps a trifle too much. Maybe he should lay off for a century or so. 

“Are you ready yet?” called Crowley from the next room. “The reservation’s in fifteen minutes!”

Aziraphale sighed. It had seemed such an exciting idea, taking his friend to try sushi for the first time. Almost an instinct when he’d heard Crowley had never had the dish. The same way it had been in Rome with the oysters. 

“Yes,” he said, “just a moment.”

Crowley appeared in the doorway. “Angel, what is _taking_ so long?” 

Aziraphale tried bravely to lift his lips into a smile. “It’s nothing.”

But Crowley’s gaze moved down from Aziraphale’s face to his fingers, which still rested guiltily over his stomach. And a spurt of emotions passed over his face, one after the other, brief as shadows. 

“Did someone make a comment?” Crowley asked softly.

Aziraphale adjusted his tie and straightened. “Gabriel again. But it was nothing. I mean -” he amended, at the sight of Crowley’s expression - “I mean, nothing I haven’t heard before. Nothing I don’t already know. So I’m not perfect; it doesn’t matter.”

Crowley crossed the room to him, slow, languid, like the serpent he was. He reached out a hand, hesitating, asking for permission; Aziraphale didn’t protest. Crowley brushed his fingers over the front of Aziraphale’s vest. 

“Screw Gabriel,” Crowley muttered. 

Aziraphale frowned. “Crowley, come now.”

“ _Not perfect_.” The demon scoffed. “You’re better than he could ever dream of being. And that includes your stomach.”

The words nearly made Aziraphale shiver. Crowley’s touch, light, inoffensive as it was, made him want to burst. 

“You’re not _his_ perfect, angel,” said Crowley, “but you’re good. And Gabriel’s an asshole.” 

Aziraphale smiled. 

3.

He was kneeling in the dirt when Crowley found him; his hands shook as he closed the cardboard box. If only he could miracle his own hands, keep them still while he worked, bind them to dispassion. If only. 

“What are you doing?” asked Crowley. 

By a great force of will, Aziraphale spoke calmly and evenly. “Oh, just being silly.” 

“What’s in the box?”

Aziraphale turned his face away. “It’s a mouse. He and his family have lived in the bookshop’s walls for years. I found him dead earlier this morning.” He laughed, a featherlight laugh meant to disguise more than to express. “Foolish to get so attached to it, I suppose, when its life is even shorter than a human’s, but there you have it - I’m a bit of a fool.” 

There was a long silence. Aziraphale schooled his features into indifference before looking back at Crowley; the demon was gazing down at him, his chest rising and falling slowly with breath he didn’t need, his shoulders slightly tensed as though preparing himself for - or maybe preventing himself from - some sudden and violent action. But his face, though still obscured by those detestable sunglasses, held in it a certain nameless gentleness. 

“You’re not a fool, angel,” he said at last. 

Aziraphale bit his lip to keep it from wobbling. He turned back to the dirt, beginning to dig. “I shouldn’t fall to pieces over a mouse. I’m an eternal Heavenly warrior.” 

Crowley knelt beside him and rolled up his sleeves. Without preamble he sank his long, elegant fingers into the soft soil as well. Aziraphale’s heart squeezed in his chest. For a protracted moment they simply dug the mouse’s grave, side by side; then their fingers began to intertwine, starting with the pinky of Aziraphale’s right hand and Crowley’s left, ending with their palms clasped together under a layer of dirt. A gesture that wouldn’t be visible from above or below. 

“You’re sensitive,” said Crowley. “It’s a good thing. You’re good.” 

And warmth spread through Aziraphale again at the words.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and squeezed Crowley’s hand before returning to the task. 

4\. 

“But I should be _happy_ about the world ending,” Aziraphale insisted.

Crowley threw up his hands, nearly sloshing the rest of his wine out of the glass. “What for? What’s to be happy about, everything burning and boiling and collapsing? This world ending when modern technology’s only just beginning?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale felt miserable. “Yes, and when there are so many vintage wines to get to, and so many books still to collect, and so many crepes…”

“Exactly,” said Crowley, leaning forward, his arms outstretched. _“Exactly.”_

“But the War.” Aziraphale shook his head. He set down his own wine glass and rubbed his forehead. “The War, the big one, where we wipe out Hell, that’s the important thing, that’s what an angel ought to be thinking about.” 

“ _I’m_ not thinking about the War.”

“Well, you’re going to lose it!” Aziraphale ran his hands through his hair, frustration and confusion and self-reproach rioting in his mind. “We’ve got to win! If I weren’t such a pathetic angel I’d still have that flaming sword and I’d be preparing to bring down evil with it - and I already gave the blasted thing away in a moment of stupidity - but I can’t - I can’t do anything else to jeopardize my mission!”

And Crowley stared at him, slack-jawed. 

Aziraphale peeked through his fingers at his friend, preparing for another snarky comment. He was met instead with Crowley speechless - more struck by Aziraphale’s words than the angel thought he’d ever seen him. 

“What?” he said, his voice small.

Crowley set his own wine down. His fists clenched. “Angel, don’t - please don’t say you were stupid to give that sword away.”

Aziraphale blinked. “But…”

“Please.” There was something close to pain in Crowley’s voice. “It was the kindest thing I’d ever seen an angel do. It shocked me. It made me -” but he cut himself off there, shaking his head, as though trying to dispel the remains of that thought from his mind.

Oh, thought Aziraphale, his chest suddenly aching, oh for the chance to see those beautiful golden eyes. He’d always taken them for granted before. Or maybe he’d been too hesitant to even look at Crowley, in the beginning. And now the demon never went anywhere without masking himself. Aziraphale positively wept for those eyes, sometimes, when he was alone and felt close to breaking down entirely. 

“You’re not pathetic,” Crowley said emphatically. “You’re not. You’re good.” 

And the angel melted once more. 

Aziraphale agreed to help Crowley stop the apocalypse. The world was preserved, and the two of them betrayed their higher offices. They saved each other from hellfire and holy water. And when the dust settled, things began, finally, to change. 

5\. 

They stood in the demon’s bedroom, next to his bed. 

“Are you sure about this?” asked Crowley. 

“Yes, I think so.” 

“I want you to be _positive_ , angel.”

How could anyone be positive of anything, in this world where Heaven was cruel and God indifferent and the Great Plan possibly a thing to combat? But Aziraphale was ready to trust Crowley. “I’m positive.” 

“You understand, I’m not forcing you, I won’t be offended, there’s no pressure at all if you want to take it slower or even if you don’t ever want this, I don’t need it, I just want you happy even if it’s -”

“Crowley.” Aziraphale stepped back, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

Crowley pushed his sunglasses further up his nose, a nervous gesture. Aziraphale realized suddenly that he was shaking.

“I mean,” he said quietly, “you’re an angel, after all, and I’m a demon.”

“I don’t care about that.” Aziraphale gripped Crowley’s hand.

The demon shuddered as though the words burned. “You should. I’m a being of sin. I’m the embodiment of evil, the first evil, the great tempter, don’t you know?”

Aziraphale stared at Crowley. His friend - his dear, cherished friend - his love. He saw the fear written plainly on his face. The fear of judgement, of condemnation, of black wings and broken halos, of slammed doors and angry, damning words. The fear of falling again and again and again. The fear, and the shame, and the overwhelming certainty that he was not enough, could never be enough, for the man in front of him. That he was weak and small and undeserving. The fear that echoed back thousands of years. Just as his did.

 _Just like me._

And Aziraphale reached forward and pulled off Crowley’s sunglasses. 

Those eyes, visible at last, exposed and vulnerable, leaked tears onto the demon’s cheeks. 

“Crowley,” he murmured. “You’re no embodiment of evil. You’re good.” 

A choked noise erupted out of the back of Crowley’s throat; it sounded ripped from the darkest depths of his heart. It was agony to hear. 

“I’ve known for a long time,” said Aziraphale. “You didn’t want me to, you tried to insist it away, but I knew. I knew in the Bastille and in the church. I knew at Tadfield. I knew when you and I saved the world. And I’ve known it in so many little ways - every time you comfort me, encourage me, lift me up, every time you remind me how much I am to you, every time you hold me. I know.” 

Crowley’s knees buckled; he sat hard on the edge of the bed. Near-disbelieving joy was rolling over his features. “You think I’m good?” 

Aziraphale took the demon’s face in his hands, cradling it, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Leaned down into him, breathing deeply. “Oh, my darling. You’re good.” 

“I’m…”

He brushed his thumbs over Crowley’s bottom lashes, gathering the tears that hung there, and kissed his eyelids, left, then right. “You’re _good_.” 

“Ah,” said Crowley, as though drowning. “Say it again.” 

And Aziraphale’s eyes fastened on Crowley’s mouth. And his head dipped to meet Crowley’s as he sat, and his lips slid over Crowley’s, and one hand tangled in his silky red hair while the other curled around his back, holding him safe and steady, and after every kiss came the words again, whispered and breathed and murmured and _meant_ , time after time, tireless: _You’re good. You’re good. You’re good._

And slowly Crowley began to smile through the kisses. And he allowed Aziraphale to lay him tenderly back on the bed’s pillows, and he relaxed, soft and sweet and awed, and he welcomed the angel’s touch, drank it in, his love surrounding him and filling him and holding him, and Aziraphale felt he would never stop saying it, _you’re good_ , until it became mixed in with a thousand other things - things like _you’re warm_ and _you’re soft_ and _you’re gentle_ and _you’re beautiful_. Things like _you’re loved_ and _you’re wanted_ and _you’re treasured_ and _you’re not alone_. Things like _I love you, every part of you, forever and ever and ever._

There on that bed, in the love of two great and eternal spirits, stood creation. And it was good.


End file.
